Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men (27 page)

Finally, even if substances could cause people to “lose control,” the abusive man would still be responsible for his actions while intoxicated because he made the
choice
to impair himself with alcohol or drugs. A man’s claim that he is not fully responsible for his mistreatment of his partner because he was drunk is simply another manifestation of the abusive mentality.

S
UBSTANCES AS
W
EAPONS OF
A
BUSE

Oscar and Ellen

Oscar and Ellen were dining in a restaurant. Tension was mounting during the meal because of several relationship issues, mostly related to Ellen’s complaints of mistreatment by Oscar. Oscar, on the other hand, insisted that Ellen’s complaints were all caused by her own hypersensitivity and desire to control
him.
Ellen was pinning her hopes for their relationship on persuading Oscar to deal with his alcohol problem. He had agreed at one point earlier in their relationship that he was indeed drinking too much, and he had maintained sobriety for nine months. His abusiveness toward her actually hadn’t improved during that time, but she didn’t see any other strategy to get him to change.

The argument at dinner that night focused on his economic abuse of her. Specifically, he had withdrawn $4,000—virtually the entirety of their savings—from their joint bank account and had bought an old BMW “for her.” Ellen was angry that she hadn’t been consulted, all the more so because she was pregnant with their first child and wanted the security of having some savings. Oscar responded by outdoing her anger, snapping through clenched teeth, “You never appreciate anything I do for you! Nothing is ever good enough for you! You just bitch, bitch, bitch!” He immediately proceeded to order a cocktail, which he knew would bother her. As soon as the waitress brought his drink, he looked Ellen in the eye, downed it in three gulps, and quickly ordered another. He set out to make himself rapidly drunk, and did. Ellen was then afraid to leave the restaurant with him, because she had been through numerous occasions on which he had combined alcohol and rage in a volatile mix that led to raised fists, pounded walls, thrown objects, and threats, leaving her cowering and trembling.

Among my clients, I have encountered numerous other ways that they have used substances as weapons, including:

• Stomping out to go driving while drunk, because he knows it will cause her to be upset and worried. This type of maneuver is particularly powerful if the couple has children and the family is dependent on the man’s income for survival.
  
• Forcing her to assist him in running or dealing drugs, thereby putting her at risk of serious legal consequences, which he can use to control her further. (A large percentage of women who are in prison for drug- or alcohol-related charges, or for minor economic crimes such as forging checks, are serving time for crimes that either directly or indirectly were instigated by their abusive partners.)
  
• During periods when he is sober or clean, threatening to return to alcohol or drug use if she does not meet his demands or obey his orders, or claiming that her challenges of him are “threatening his sobriety.”
  
• Blaming her for problems in his life that are really caused by his addiction.
  
• Pressuring and manipulating his partner into becoming substance-involved herself. He then uses her addiction to increase his power over her and to get other people to disbelieve her reports that he is abusive. This tactic is particularly common when the abuser has a substance-abuse problem himself, since he doesn’t want his partner to be able to hold anything over him. But I have also had clients who kept their partners substance-involved while staying sober or using substances only moderately themselves.
  

Shane and Amanda

In one of my cases, an alcoholic woman named Amanda had entered sobriety several times, but her husband, Shane, would sabotage her progress each time by ridiculing her for being “dependent” on AA, telling her she was weak for not being able to stay away from alcohol on her own, “without a crutch.” He would also go out and buy beer, telling her, “I just want to have a few on hand in case friends come over,” but he never seemed to drink them. They would just sit in the refrigerator and in cabinets tempting her, and finally she would succumb.

Amanda eventually went into a detox center and didn’t tell Shane where she was going, knowing that if she spoke with him she was likely to give in to the temptation to get back together with him. Shane left no stone unturned in his efforts to find out where she was and get a message to her. As of my last contact with the case, she had succeeded in staying away from him and as a result had regained custody of her children, which his abuse and her drinking had caused her to lose.

M
UTUAL
R
EINFORCEMENT OF
A
DDICTION AND
P
ARTNER
A
BUSE

Notice that when a man uses substances as a weapon, he ends up contributing to his own problem with substances. Thus partner abuse can feed the problem of addiction, and not just vice versa. They are two separate issues, neither of which causes the other but which do help to keep each other stuck. A man’s abusiveness strengthens his denial of his substance-abuse problem, as he can blame all of his life difficulties on his partner. His negative attitudes toward her allow him to easily dismiss concerns that she raises about his addiction. At the same time, the addiction fortifies his denial of his abusiveness, as he uses the substance as an excuse and as a weapon.

O
THER
A
DDICTIONS

I have worked with clients who have been addicted to gambling, cocaine, heroin, and prescription medications. Several have also claimed to be “sex addicts,” but I don’t buy this self-diagnosis from abusive men (for reasons that I covered in Chapter 4, under “The Player”). Any addiction can be a financial drain on a couple, contribute to the man’s secretiveness, and encourage him to use his partner as a scapegoat. An abuser’s addiction doesn’t cause his abuse, but it does make his partner’s life even more painful and complicated.

E
NTITLEMENT AND
A
DDICTION

An abusive man typically believes that his use or abuse of substances is none of his partner’s business. No matter how his addiction may lead him to abuse his partner economically (because he pours money into the substance and/or has trouble holding down a job) no matter how burdened she is with household responsibilities because he is out partying, no matter how much worse he may treat her while intoxicated, he nonetheless feels entitled to use substances as he chooses. If she criticizes him for his selfishness or confronts him with the effects that his partying has on her life, he feels justified in calling her a “nag” or a “bitch” or labeling her “controlling.” In short, irresponsible use of alcohol or drugs is another one of the privileges that the abusive man may award himself, and he may use psychological or physical assaults to punish his partner for challenging it.

S
UBSTANCE
A
BUSE
B
LOCKS
S
ELF-EXAMINATION

While substance addiction does not cause a man to become abusive, it does ensure that the abusiveness
remains.
I have yet to see a substance-abusing client make significant and lasting improvements in his treatment of his partner unless he simultaneously deals with his addiction. In fact, I only give an alcoholic or drug addict about two months to get himself into recovery, and if he doesn’t, I dismiss him from the abuser program; I don’t want to give his partner false hopes, nor do I want to waste my program’s time. Facing up to a problem with partner abuse, and changing it, is a profoundly complex and uncomfortable process that requires consistent commitment over a long period of time. It takes tremendous courage for a man to be honest with himself, to reevaluate his ways of thinking about his partner, and to accept how much emotional injury he has caused her. No active substance abuser is willing or able to take on this task.

Thus, although recovery from addiction is not sufficient to bring about change in a man’s abusiveness, it is a
necessary prerequisite.
Only if he is willing to address
both
problems—and I have had a number of clients who have gotten serious about becoming both sober and respectful—can he stop being a source of pain and distress to his partner.

• Alcohol or drugs cannot make an abuser out of a man who is not abusive.
  
• Even while intoxicated, abusers continue to make choices about their actions based on their habits, attitudes, and self-interest.
  
• The primary role that addiction plays in partner abuse is as an excuse.
  
• Abusiveness and addiction are two distinct problems requiring separate solutions.
  

V
AN SPOKE WITH A RASPY
, modulated voice that complemented his sadly expressive blue eyes. His reddish-blond hair was always wrapped in a bandanna which, combined with his thick neck and upper arms, created a biker image. But his language did not fit the tough-guy stereotype. He spoke of his pain, of the need to face up to oneself, of the process of denial and acceptance. He appeared to be his own harshest critic, referring frequently to his own selfishness, immaturity, and other “character flaws.” He stated openly that he was alcoholic and was attending at least one AA meeting per day. He had not had a drink in almost eight months.

Van had, by his own description, nearly killed his partner Gail in a beating nine months earlier. He would gaze at the floor and speak slowly as he recalled this assault, the picture of remorse. “It was bad,” he would say. “Real bad. I’m lucky she’s alive.” He was arrested and spent that night in jail, before his mother and brother bailed him out the next day. “I drank nonstop for three weeks afterward, trying to blot out what I had done, and then I woke up one morning with bruises all over me from some fight I had been in, I don’t even know where, and I haven’t had a drink since. I finally accepted the fact that I wasn’t going to be able to run from myself forever, and I was going to have to deal with what I had done to Gail.” He did not join an abuser program until several months later, however, when he was required to do so by the court.

For weeks, Van was my star group member. He would challenge other men about their denial, about their efforts to blame their own behavior on their partners, about their need to take an honest and painful look at themselves. I pushed him a few times to stop using his alcoholism as an excuse for abusiveness and to examine more seriously his history of bullying of and violence toward Gail. He would react to my challenges with momentary irritation but then would soften and say, “I know I still have a lot of work left to do.” In short, he seemed like an abusive man who was interested in doing the hard work involved in making real changes.

Van and Gail had been separated since the severe beating. They were speaking from time to time but not sleeping together. Van said he thought it would be a long time before Gail would trust him again, and he would have to give her space.

However, over a period of three or four months, Van began to realize that Gail was not taking a break from their relationship in order to rebuild her trust in him, as he had believed. She was getting herself unhooked. As it dawned on him that she was thinking seriously about closing the door permanently, he started a rapid backslide before my eyes. First, he surprised me one day by saying that Gail “should really give our relationship another chance.” I was stunned. “Why on earth should a woman stay with a partner who gave her a beating that nearly killed her? I certainly wouldn’t want to do it.”

Van said, “The pain in our relationship wasn’t all hers, you know. She hurt me a lot too.” I asked if that somehow justified battering her. “No,” he answered, “I’m not justifying it. I’m just saying it isn’t like I was all bad and she was all good.”

“And so that means she owes you another chance? How many times do you get to beat a woman up before she stops owing you?” To this, Van just muttered under his breath and lightly shook his head.

At the next session I focused more time on Van, because separation is a time when abusers can be particularly destructive. Since the previous session, he had received the definitive word from Gail that their relationship was over and that she was going to start dating, making it particularly important for us to try to influence his thought process. He plunged quickly into a homily about how hard he was working on himself in contrast to Gail, “who is going nowhere and who isn’t dealing with
her
issues at all.” I asked how Gail’s progress was going to be assisted by getting back together with an abusive man. “Hey,” he said, “I’m a lot better for her than those losers she’s hanging around with now. Most of them are still drinking and acting totally immature.”

Van’s group was alarmed by his reversion, and members raced to try to get him back on track, pointing out to him that (1) he was claiming to have made great changes, but his entitled insistence that Gail owed him loyalty was evidence of an abuser who
wasn’t
changing; (2) he was slipping back into minimizing how destructive his abusiveness and violence had been to Gail, to an extreme where he was convincing himself that he was a more constructive presence in her life than other people were; and(3) he was failing to accept the reality that a woman does not have to be “all good” in order to have the right to live free of abuse. I kept an additional thought to myself, which was that based on my conversation with her I was confident that Gail’s life was not “going nowhere” and that her primary goal at that point was to heal from what
he
had done to her. When he made disparaging references to “her issues,” he was ignoring the reality that her issues were 90 percent
him.
I remained silent on this point because I was concerned, given the state of mind he was in, that the better he understood her healing process, the more effectively he would take steps to sabotage it.

Van was not open to his group’s feedback the way he had been in earlier months. His heels were dug in, as we could see in the digusted shaking of his head and the dismissive curl of his lip. The group had stumbled upon a core aspect of Van’s entitlement—as tends to happen with each client sooner or later—and we weren’t going to take it apart in a few short weeks. We hoped that we could reach him eventually though, for Van still had six months to go of the eleven the court had ordered him to spend in our program.

He never gave us the chance, unfortunately. Less than three weeks later, overwhelmed by his outraged entitlement, he approached Gail in a restaurant in front of numerous witnesses, called her a “fucking bitch,” and walked off flashing her the finger. His verbal assault violated a restraining order barring him from approaching her, and since he was already on probation for his grave attack on her, he was jailed for a minimum of six months. Gail had little desire to see Van behind bars, but in this case his incarceration was a blessing, as it gave her an uninterrupted opportunity to move on with her life, which she did. (Later in this chapter we will look at strategies for getting away from a frightening relationship safely.)

W
HAT AN
A
BUSER
D
OES
I
F
Y
OU
A
RE
L
EAVING
H
IM

Breaking up with an abuser can be very hard to do. In fact, leaving a nonabusive partner is generally easier, contrary to what many people believe. Few abusers readily allow themselves to be left. When they feel a partner starting to get stronger, beginning to think for herself more, slipping out from under domination, abusers move to their endgame. Some of their more common maneuvers include:

Each abuser uses a different mix of the above tactics, and some let go somewhat more easily than others. Strategies of control that appear contradictory may go hand in hand. For example, he may insist adamantly one day, “You should be able to tell that I’ve changed,” and then call the next night to say, “If you don’t give this relationship another chance, you’re going to find out what I’m really capable of.” One day on the phone he may tell you that his love for you will never die, but when his poetic language doesn’t succeed in persuading you to meet him for a drink, he will abruptly switch to yelling: “I don’t give a shit about you anyhow, so just let your life continue down the stinking hole it’s in!” He doesn’t care that these pieces don’t fit together, because he is intently focused on a single desire: to get you back under his control.

He knows he used to be able to control you with charm, affection, and promises. He also remembers how well intimidation or aggression worked at other times. Now both of these tools are losing their effectiveness, so he tries to increase the voltages. He may switch erratically back and forth between the two like a doctor who cycles a patient through a range of antibiotics, trying to find the one that will get the infection under control. And the analogy is an apt one, because an abuser sees his (ex-) partner’s growing strength and independence as a sickness rather than as the harbinger of health that it actually is.

Promises that an abuser makes during this period can be persuasive, especially if they are combined with sincere-sounding apologies or if he takes some concrete initiative such as quitting drinking, locating a therapist, or joining an abuser program. However, once he succeeds in getting you to reunite with him, he gradually plows his way back into the usual ruts, dropping counseling because he “can’t afford it,” saying he will go back to “a little” drinking because he can “handle it,” and so forth. Before long, daily life has returned to its former contours.

My clients make flip-flopping statements during breakups about who is responsible for the dissolution of the relationship, bouncing between blaming everything on themselves and casting all fault on to the woman. Making it her fault is closer to their real thinking; the blaming of themselves is largely a way to win sympathy from other people, including abuse counselors, who can get drawn in by a theatrical show of pained guilt. And in an ironic twist, the more he says that the separation is his own fault, the more friends and relatives are tempted to pressure the woman to believe that he will change.

When one of my clients takes this
mea culpa
stance, I ask him to describe in detail how exactly his behavior drove his partner away. Eight times out of ten the man can give me only two or three examples, or none. In other words, he doesn’t really believe that he is abusive, and my request for extensive specifics smokes him out. If he does manage to list a few things he did wrong, they often are far afield from the core of his destructiveness, as in comments like “I should have made her a higher priority; we didn’t do things together enough,” or they are actually backhanded remarks to get more digs in against her, such as, “I used to walk away from her because of the insane rages she goes into, but I should have realized that my leaving just made her feel even worse.”

The volatile, abusive, and sometimes dangerous reactions that abusers can have when relationships draw to a close have often been considered, especially by psychologists, to be evidence of the man’s “fear of abandonment.” But women have fears of abandonment that are just as great as men’s, yet they rarely stalk or kill their partners after a breakup. Not only that, but many abusers are vicious to their ex-partners
even when they do not desire a reunion or when they initiated the breakup themselves.
The clue to how an abuser handles separation lies in the same thinking that has been causing his controlling and abusive behavior throughout the relationship and that has driven his partner away from him.

H
OW
A
BUSERS
V
IEW
S
EPARATION

Van’s internal process, and the destructive behavior it led him to, captures the essence of how an abusive man perceives the ending of a relationship. Let’s look at the central elements of his outlook:

“A
BUSE IS NO REASON TO END A RELATIONSHIP.
”

Van was unwilling to accept that his brutal mistreatment of Gail was adequate reason for her to leave him. Why? First, he believed that the pain Gail sometimes caused him during their relationship outweighed his abuse of her. If Van can convince himself that he has an even balance sheet, despite his severe physical assault, imagine how easily a purely psychological abuser can do so (even though the reality is that emotional abuse can do just as much damage).

Second, Van believed that it was unreasonable to expect a man to be nonabusive unless his partner
never
hurt his feelings or failed to cater to him. He felt that we were being unfair and unrealistic about a man’s inherent nature, as if we were asking a tiger to be vegetarian. Without saying so directly, he revealed his attitude that a woman needs to accept the fact that a certain amount of abuse just comes with the territory of being involved with a man, unless she can be perfect.